This past week we further disgraced ourselves as a nation that has lost all dignity. The most incompetent Secretary of Defense in history, Pete Hegseth announced that Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan convicted of shooting and killing thirteen fellow soldiers and wounding thirty-two in Fort Hood Texas in 2009 will be publicly executed by firing squad. The announcement even surprised officials in the Pentagon. Hegseth made the announcement on the deck of the USS Lincoln that he allowed to stay out at sea for a grueling three hundred-thirty two days. He made the announcement to a right wing podcaster Jack Posobiec where he wouldn’t be questioned by reporters. When asked why a public execution Hegseth said, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch, that it’s public because they need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things.”
It will be an execution for the digital age. It will be live streamed just like Netflix on December 3, 2026 if you want to mark it on your calendar. This is not a debate over the death penalty. Everyone has an opinion. Twenty-seven states, the federal government and the military have the death penalty. Usually the death penalty is only witnessed by prison officials, members of the victims family and a few reporters. The last public execution in the United States was on August 14, 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky. Rainey Bethea was hanged for the murder and rape of a woman after he broke into her bedroom. It was supposed to take place in the courthouse yard. But the county just spent a lot of money to plant flowers there. So, it was moved to a lot near the county garage. Twenty-thousand people watched.
Hasan committed an awful crime. He said he wanted to stop US soldiers from going to Afghanistan to kill Muslims. He was scheduled to deploy there shortly after his rampage. Again, this is not an argument for or against the death penalty. It’s about how we conduct ourselves as a civilized society. Victims and their families have had mixed reactions to the public execution. Alonzo Lunsford, a former US Army Sergeant, survived being shot by Hasan seven times. He told the BBC that a firing squad is a”befitting” punishment because lethal injection would be “doing him a favor. But Lunsford has strong reservations about the execution being live streamed. He said the event is “not something you should view for entertainment’s purposes.”
Our standing in the world has been greatly diminished in the last two years. Allies believe they can no longer count on the United States to be a dependable partner to face challenges in the world. We will now join Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yeman as countries that still perform public executions. Is this the company we want to keep? Most research shows the death penalty doesn’t deter crime. If you do watch the execution, will it give you a sense of satisfaction and justice served? Will it make you proud, happy or sad? Only you can be the judge of how far we’ve come since that day in Owensboro in 1936.
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